Portland, OR-July 23, 2014- Multi-award winning sound engineer Dennis Sands has scored more than 240 films since 1979, with four Academy Award nominations in the Best Sound category on his resume. His thirst for cutting-edge technology recently motivated a wide-ranging cinema sound system upgrade at his Soundwaves SB facility, located in the Central Coast region of sunny Santa Barbara, California.

The upgrade centers on the world’s first dedicated film music mix room outfitted with Dolby Atmos capability, which produces a rich, highly detailed and immersive surround audio experience ideal for the theatrical cinema. The Atmos integration was accompanied by a new multi-channel speaker configuration to support the format, while also incorporating several existing components across the audio distribution, processing and monitoring chain.

The integration of new and existing technology required some forward-thinking strategies, notably the marriage of Sands’ BSS London BLU-806 processor with his new Dolby Atmos Rendering and Monitoring Unit (RMU). The Dolby Atmos RMU is a necessary component of the Atmos installation, serving as the format’s processing core. However, its design features MADI optical connectors, while the BSS unit only accepts a Dante input.

“There was no way to work in this format without a way to reliably convert MADI to Dante,” said Sands. “The output metadata from my ProTools sessions contain the Dolby panner connected to the Atmos rendering box, which interprets whatever data I create in my mixes and outputs a MADI signal. That MADI signal then has to speak to a monitoring system, which in my case is the BSS – a system used by many film stages. However, BSS cannot accept a MADI signal – it only accepts Dante. We needed a stable, reliable conversion tool to bring us into the Dante environment. Simply put, my system breaks down without that conversion.”

Enter Focusrite, a manufacturer of high-quality audio products that includes the RedNet family, a series of Ethernet-networked audio interfaces that harness the power of Dante media networking.

Working with systems integration firm Visioneering Design, Sands received the world’s first RedNet6, which provides a stable and reliable MADI-to-Dante conversion. The RedNet6 essentially gives Sands a cost-effective way to continue using his tried-and-tested BSS monitoring solution within the Dolby Atmos workflow.

“The BLU 806 accepts the Dante signal via the RedNet6 audio interface, and proceeds with digital processing before outputting the signals to the next destination, whether it’s analog outputs for speakers or digital outputs for EQ and other downstream functions,” said Ron Lagerlof, president of Visioneering Design. “And we can do it all with two cables. It’s a clean, sensible interface that allows Dennis to do work within this incredible new audio format and keep his existing processing and monitoring equipment. Without the RedNet6, it would have meant adding many more boxes and cables. It would have been considerably more expensive.”

By leveraging Dante, Sands also enjoys automatic synchronization of everything upstream from the initial conversion stage thanks to Dante’s reliable, precision-timed clocks. Lagerlof notes that while he could have configured a clock system within the BLU-806, he decided to use Dante clocking from the RedNet6 to perfectly synchronize everything on the network through the BSS-806 and beyond, right up to the speakers.

Sands is thrilled with the outcome, noting that the overall signal flow remains very logical even with the hybrid transport medium. “I’m not a design engineer, but I can speak to the reliability of technology based on my 40 years of experience in studio environments,” said Sands. “Dante has become a prime component of my system with the Dolby Atmos integration, and it’s clearly a well-designed technology based on how reliably it has worked. This could have turned into a very complex setup, but Dante has helped to make this a simpler network architecture. I can show up at my studio, turn everything on, and it works. It sounds mundane, but that is very important in my world.”

Lagerlof adds that Dante is a compelling transport medium for film scoring and mixing facilities.

“I’m familiar with many of the Dante products on the market, and often work with Dante in BSS processing and monitoring environments,” said Lagerlof. “The more devices that become Dante enabled, the less I will need to run analog and digital single-pair wires through miles and miles of conduit and cable trays. In this case we are going directly out of the RMU and into the monitoring system, and perhaps down the road more speaker manufacturers will figure out a way to accept Dante directly. There are a lot of possibilities.”

About Audinate

Audinate revolutionizes AV systems to enable our customers to thrive in a networked world. Audinate’s Dante media networking technology has been adopted by the leading OEM manufacturers and has become the standard and dominant networking technology in the professional audio/visual industry. Dante is used extensively for live performance events, commercial installation, broadcast, recording and production, and communications systems. Audinate offices are located in US, United Kingdom and Australia. Visit www.audinate.com for the latest news and information on the company. Dante is Digital Media Networking Perfected.

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